Foreign ministers open way for country to join EU though threat of veto still hangs over application
Serbia today won its biggest prize as it seeks to join the European Union when EU foreign ministers unblocked its membership bid despite the failure to arrest the genocide and war crimes suspect, General Ratko Mladic.
But the ministers, meeting in Luxembourg, also hedged their support for Belgrade with stiff conditions, stressing that any of the 27 EU governments could veto further movement towards joining the EU.
Today's breakthrough occurred because the Dutch government dropped its previous blockade of Serbia. But the Dutch made clear that it could revive its veto at any point unless Belgrade tracked down Mladic, who has been on the run for 15 years, and handed him over for trial to the UN war crimes tribunal for former Yugoslavia in The Hague.
Serbia applied to join the EU almost a year ago but European governments have refused to open negotiations mainly because of the Mladic issue. The decision today was to pass the Serbian application to the European Commission for review, a compulsory stage for any country trying to join. Negotiations would normally be launched once the commission has analysed the bid, a process that generally takes about a year.
"Further steps will be taken when the council unanimously decides" that Serbia is co-operating fully with the tribunal in The Hague, said the foreign ministers, meaning that the Dutch and others could resurrect the veto at any stage.
They also made Serbia's EU ambitions conditional on good relations with Kosovo, the breakaway southern province which declared independence two years ago but which Serbia refuses to accept.
Today's move was seen as a reward for President Boris Tadic, the pro-western democrat and Serbian leader who recently dropped attempts to question Kosovo's independence and agreed to EU-sponsored talks with the Kosovo Albanian leadership.
Britain and Germany, previously supportive of the Dutch opposition to Serbia, have swung behind Tadic in recent weeks and promised him backing if he was more conciliatory towards Kosovo.
The shift in London and Berlin left the new Dutch government isolated. It bowed reluctantly to the consensus, but insisted on strict conditions.
The Dutch are fixated on Mladic because he oversaw the massacre of 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men in 1995 at Srebrenica, which was under the command of Dutch UN peacekeepers. The Srebrenica bloodbath shamed and traumatised the Dutch elite.
Critics say the Serbian authorities have done little to capture Mladic, the Bosnian Serb military commander in the 1992-95 Bosnia war. Those inclined to give Serbia the benefit of the doubt say that Belgrade has already taken huge political risks by handing over dozens of wanted war criminals including the very top politicians, such as former president Slobodan Milosevic and Radovan Karadzic, the former Bosnian Serb leader.
guardian
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